By way of a simplified overview, this invention is directed to a method for segmenting and transmitting on-demand real-time video clips from live events to cellular telephones or personal computers. Live-action events, such as professional sporting events, are typically filmed using multiple cameras positioned around a stadium. Each camera produces a video feed that is then subsequently edited into a single feed that is then broadcast on television by a television network or a television station. The desire exists among viewers and fans of live televised events, such as a baseball game, to watch highlights of the game shortly after those highlights actually occur in the game. Highlights typically comprise important moments in the live-action event or the game that a viewer wishes to see again. Typically, however, viewers must rely upon the televised broadcast, as it is edited by the television network or station, to display certain highlights, such as instant-replays. Viewers typically cannot request and view highlights on-demand at substantially the same time, or within seconds or minutes of those highlights occurring in the game. Viewers also cannot typically pre-select the types of highlights—or instant replays—they wish to see. Nor can viewers typically request to view a highlight from a specific camera angle, including a camera angle that recorded the highlight, but was not used to televise that moment in the edited video-feed broadcast by the network or station. Rather, viewers must rely upon the television network or station to display the highlights that it presumes the viewers wish to see and only from the camera angles used in the edited and televised broadcast video feed. Nor can viewers of a live-action televised event typically request that the highlights they wish to see, from the camera angle they wish to see it, be transmitted to their cellular telephone or their personal computer shortly after it occurs in the game.
For viewers to be able to request to see any highlight they wish, from the camera angle they prefer, would presumptively require manual operators monitor the video feeds of live-action events. The manual operators would locate all possible highlights that viewers might wish to see. This would include highlights that the television network or station would not intend to broadcast. Upon locating what might be a highlight—such as a baseball batter swinging and missing for a third strike—the manual operator would physically edit the clip so that enough time occurs before the batter swings and after the batter swings to frame the clip so that the highlight would be meaningful to the viewer. In other words, the manual operator would have to determine how much time to place before the batter swings, as well as how much time to place after the batter swings, so that a viewer watching the clip appreciates the clip. In addition, the manual operators would have to monitor every camera angle, including the edited video feed comprising a number of camera angles that is actually broadcast to television viewers. For each camera feed, the manual operator would have to physically edit and produce a short video-clip of the highlight. Producing video-clips that contain highlights using the foregoing manner would impose considerable costs and resources on television networks and television stations or any other video management system. The costs and resources that need to be expended to manually produce a plurality of video-clips would typically be economically impractical and unfeasible.